Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi dismissed his cabinet secretary and his aides on Wednesday as part of a push to cut "unnecessary government jobs", an official in his media office said.

Abadi launched this week the biggest overhaul of the country's political system since the end of US military occupation, enacting a package of measures to eliminate a layer of senior government posts, scrap sectarian and party quotas for state positions, and reopen corruption investigations.